Rights of the Child
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
10 Oct 2010
Human rights are not something we make up. They belong to us because we are human. While the law might limit rights in certain circumstances, it cannot give them or take them away.
Most people support human rights, but if we take rights seriously we cannot pick and choose. We have to recognise rights whether we like them or not, just as we have to recognise and respect basic facts like gravity.
Rights belong equally to every member of the human family. When we start making exceptions, everyone's protection is weakened. The rights of one group cannot be sacrificed for those of another. Sex, ethnicity, religion, age, our level of dependency or our stage of development cannot be used to take rights away from individuals.
Sometimes these factors require special vigilance in protecting the rights of vulnerable people. The UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child, for example, recognises that "the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth".
Last year Australian human rights activist Rita Joseph published Human Rights and the Unborn Child (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers). Her book studies the texts and drafting processes of many major human rights documents to show that they were intended to protect not only the rights of those who have been born, but also unborn children and their mothers.
This raises hard questions for abortion laws in Australia, and for human rights laws. Under the ACT Bill of Rights the right to life only applies from birth. But once the unborn are excluded from human rights protection, why not other groups such as the disabled? Already in Australia pre-natal testing is used to terminate about 90 per cent of pregnancies with Down syndrome children.
It is not the state of "being conscious", "being born", "being wanted" or "being perfect" that confers human rights. It is simply being human. This is the irrevocable basis of all human rights. Each human being has dignity and an unconditional value, before as well as after birth; whether young or old, weak or strong. Our laws should reflect this.
Rita Joseph also examines the human rights issue of women being pressured or placed in situations where abortion seems the only option. Defending the unborn also means defending the rights of women.
PS: does anyone else feel that the decorations on the CBD statues are totally inappropriate?
